, cannot go
wrong; that there is a right of resistance to all governments that are
fallible, because they are partial, but none against government of the
people by the people, because it has no master and no judge, and
decides in the last instance and alone; that insurrection is the law
of all unpopular societies founded on a false principle and a broken
contract, and submission that of the only legitimate societies, based
on the popular will; that there is no privilege against the law of
nature, and no right against the power of all. By this chain of
reasoning, with little infusion of other ingredients, Rousseau applied
the sequence of the ideas of pure democracy to the government of
nations.

Now the most glaring and familiar fact in history shows that the
direct self-government of a town cannot be extended over an empire. It
is a plan that scarcely reaches beyond the next parish. Either one
district will be governed by another, or both by somebody else chosen
for the purpose. Either plan contradicts first principles. Subjection
is the direct negation of democracy; representation is the indirect.
So that an Englishman underwent bondage to parliament as much as
Lausanne to Berne or as America to England if it had submitted to
taxation, and by law recovered his liberty but once in seven years.
Consequently Rousseau, still faithful to Swiss precedent as well as to
the logic of his own theory, was a federalist. In Switzerland, when
one half of a canton disagrees with the other, or the country with the
town, it is deemed natural that they should break into two, that the
general will may not oppress minorities. This multiplication of
self-governing communities was admitted by Rousseau as a preservative
of unanimity on one hand, and of liberty on the other. Helvetius came
to his support with the idea that men are not only equal by nature but
alike, and that society is the cause of variation; from which it would
follow that everything may be done by laws and by education.

Rousseau is the author of the strongest political theory that had
appeared amongst men. We cannot say that he reasons well, but he knew
how to make his argument seem convincing, satisfying, inevitable, and
he wrote with an eloquence and a fervour that had never been seen in
prose, even in Bolingbroke or Milton. His books gave the first signal
of a universal subversion, and were as fatal to the Republic as to the
Monarchy. Although he lives by the social c